Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

Foxy Roxy “Vixen” and Archetype Shiraz: Right on the Mark, Right Off the Radar

In the wine world, there are elite wineries, mid-tier wineries, a vast stratum of competent and maybe occasionally excellent wineries, and then a massive sea of dead-ordinary wineries, all of which are easily findable with a short google search. Then, beneath all that, are wineries that are not so much below the radar as off it altogether. What follows is a prime example of how wines slip through the cracks…

I rarely ever go out and buy wine anymore. What with the remains of our flooded-out shop sitting there in climate-controlled repose in our storage, and people literally knocking on my door to see if I’ll taste stuff, there’s just little motivation to lay out usable greenbacks on anything but spectacular, scarce stuff I’d miss otherwise. But, while browsing at Grocery Outlet today, I saw a brand I recognized and had read about but never actually saw. Archetype Vineyards is a creation of Diageo Brands, a huge wine conglomerate that handles promotions, importing, and domestic distribution for dozens of wineries from all over the world. The notion of Archetype was first proposed by their marketing guru, Claudia Schubert, based on their knowledge of an over-supply of grapes in Australia and their working relationship with young hot-shot Aussie winemaker, Thomas Jung. The fruit is sourced from estates all over Barossa, arguably Australia’s analog to Napa Valley. I had never tried the stuff, so I busted out the green. It wasn’t all that painful, to be honest: Archetype wines at Grocery Outlet go for TWO DOLLARS AND NINETY-NINE CENTS…

Now, if the wine was steaming, stench-tossing excrement, three bucks would be asking too much. But it’s not. Not by a long shot. Archetype Shiraz Barossa and Archetype Cabernet-Shiraz Barossa are good, solid (if a tad quirky) values. The Shiraz, sitting there in my glass as I write this, has a very un-Syrah-like nose that reveals bacon fat and something woodsy like sawdust, all riding atop a perfumy core of berry pie, lanolin, and pepper. On the palate, it delivers viscous blackberry liqueur, vanilla, toast, licorice, and a finishing note of emphatic anise. The Cab-Shiraz takes the same basic profile and adds a shot of black currant, with distinct notes of saddle leather and roasted meat. I think fans of the big Northern Rhone Syrahs of Cote Rotie, St. Joseph, and Croze-Hermitage would find the Cab-Shriaz eerily familiar. The basic Barossa Shiraz reminds me most of a California Northern Coastal Syrah that I’ve always enjoyed from Morgan Cellars of Monterrey.

Is this great Syrah? No. If these were $19.99, you wouldn’t be reading this, right now. But at three bills a pop, this could be a case buy. They have a lot of it, but Grocery Outlet is based on churn. Nothing good is gonna last very long. I’d suggest you at least try these, if you’re a Shiraz freak. If nothing else, I can honestly say that this is a hell of a lot better way to use three smackers than Two-Buck Chuck. 86 Points for both wines

Judye and I spent a lovely weekend at the last place I expected to fall in love with during our Summer of Camping Overload: Potholes State Park. The place is in the friggin’ desert and it really doesn’t change all that much until you get past the Saddle Mountains, about 25 miles south. But, on Saturday afternoon of our stay, we took a road trip to see the area and came across an outfit down on Route 26 called Foxy Roxy Winery. I knew absolutely nothing about the place but it happens to be sitting in the middle of what appears to be about 100 acres of vineyards and we got curious. Could this be an estate winery? Here? Not actually at the end of the earth but a place from which you can definitely see it?

Well, yeah. This blend of Cab, Merlot, and Cab Franc is, quite simply, the most appealing take I’ve tried in years on that tired old Bordeaux Blend thing that this state has wallowed in for far too long, to the point at which, when I was running VinElla in Woodinville, I asked my distributors’ reps to stop bringing me anything that was another repetition of that evil troika. How freakin’ many times can you taste the same recipe and not get sick of it? And how can anybody, given the literal thousands of blends like this, do anything significantly different? Apparently, the folks at Foxy figured it out. I don’t know if this is a result of the terroir of their 120 acres of actual vineyard land, there in that arid, stony, volcanic landscape, or if it’s something to do with their lavish use of Hungarian oak, a practice that has become sorta rare since Mark Colvin closed the doors on that fine Walla Walla winery, (I suspect the latter, frankly) but whatever produced this wine, the result is little short of magic. This shows off an almost-hedonistic gusher of black and red berries, stone, leather, cafe au lait, and a strong suggestion of pipe tobacco on the finish. It’s silken and balanced and ridiculously easy to drink. As always, in evaluating a wine that has me pop-eyed, I poured it for non-wine-geeky folks – in this case, my step-daughter and her husband – and watched them go similarly starry-eyed. They and Judye are now plotting a case purchase. 90 Points

We tried the other FR wines at their tasting room and liked several, most notably their Syrah and a very un-Reisling-like Reisling that I took home a bottle of. It may not have been varietally true to any known Reisling, but it was a tasty wine that you could serve with your fish dinner and enjoy immensely.

I’ve looked around a fair amount this weekend, trying to see if Foxy Roxy is locally available in King Co., but haven’t yet located a vendor and the winery’s phone tosses me to their fax machine. I’m planning to call Monday and see if anybody here is carrying the wines and if I find anything, I’ll pass it along. In the meantime, if your travels take you down Washington Route 26, just west of Othello, take a moment to drop in and taste one of the lowest-profile wineries I know in Washington – a condition which, if they keep making wines like Vixen, won’t last long.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.